Red Cloud Quotes
When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.
Red Cloud. "Address at Cooper Institute." The New York Times, 17 June 1870, p. 5.
Red Cloud (Lakota: Maȟpíya Lúta) was one of the most important leaders of the Oglala Lakota from 1868 to 1909. He was one of the most capable Native American opponents that the United States Army faced in its mission to occupy the western territories, defeating the United States during Red Cloud's War, which was a fight over control of the Powder River Country in northeastern Wyoming and southern Montana. The largest action of the war was the Fetterman Fight, with 81 U.S soldiers killed, and was the worst military defeat suffered by the United States Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn ten years later.
